Gas Stations Reserving Credit Funds Experiment
I’ve mentioned this before and have read tons on this. When you use a card to pay at the gas pump, the gas station will reserve an unusually high amount of money and hold onto it for far too long before relinquishing that hold on your money. This is a big problem for people that use their debit card for their bank account and need to worry about being close to any limits.
I recently received two American Express gift cards valued at $100 each that can only be used at gas stations. In the paperwork that came with the cards, AMEX made it very clear to only pay inside and not at the pump because of this very reason. When you pay inside, the gas station normally will only charge you what your actual cost ends up being, not this set amount higher than what you owe them.
I plan to keep close track of the balance on these cards so I figured, eh, let’s give it a try and see what my favorite gas station does.
I drove up to Wawa to fill up my tank this afternoon and inserted my virgin $100 AMEX gift card into the pump to pay for my exactly $31 gas fill up. On this one card, I should have $69 left. I came home and logged into the website for the AMEX card to check out the balance. $25. This means they reserved $75 of my money for a $31 fill up.
I plan to monitor this daily to determine how long it takes Wawa to release the rest of my money back to my gift card.
I’m expecting the money to be back on the card no later than Monday. Anything after that is simply unexcusable.
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October 19th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I have spoken with a few different convenience stores about this issue. Each one has said that the amount reserved is determined by the Bank (or CC Company) and the length of time the money is held is determined by the bank as well. They say that the money is released by their system as soon as the transaction is complete or when they run their numbers each evening. When you get gas on a Friday night or weekend, it takes longer to get the money recredited to your account because banks aren’t open on weekends (even the ones with weekend hours).
That’s what they “say”, if it is true…no clue.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:59 pm
Some do batch processing so it’s only every few days that the actual amount is uploaded. The length of the hold after the batch update is determined by the bank. The amount of money reserved is determined by the vendor/store/gas station.
You’ll want to read this for more details: http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Banking/BetterBanking/HosedAtTheGasPumpByYourDebitCard.aspx
This is one of my biggest pet peeves.